By Former German minister of foreign affairs Annalena Baerbock has been elected president of the United Nations General Assembly. Baerbock’s ascent to be a top multilateralist seems to be a natural career course when one does not know her about her policies or track record. While her tenure starting in September 2025 got more than enough support with 167 countries having voted for her, there are quite perplexing things in the background, surrounding even her nomination, let alone her victory, which show just how disregarded multilateralism has become.
While Baerbock spoke about a crucial year for the General Assembly, alluding to a difficult search for outgoing Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s successor, her nomination had its own difficulties, especially in her homeland.
57 percent of participants in a survey by the opinion research institute YouGov on behalf of the German Press Agency saw Baerbock’s nomination as negative or rather negative. 42 percent of those surveyed rated the decision as negative, another 15 percent as rather negative. Only 12 and 16 percent of those surveyed rated the nomination as positive or rather positive.
Beyond that, top German politicians and their circles are also distraught, the loudest of them being former UN ambassador and head of the Munich Security Conference Christoph Heusgen.
Heusgen – for years being the mastermind behind every foreign policy move during the chancellery of Angela Merkel – was particularly bothered by the departure from the originally intended candidate, former Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe leader Helga Schmid. „Helga Schmid is the best German diplomat. She brought Russians, Chinese, Europeans and Americans together at the same table and helped negotiate the Iran agreement. She was the ideal candidate to hold the 193 States of the General Assembly together,“ he said.
Heusgen in particular criticized the fact that Schmid had already been officially nominated, had held talks with over 100 delegations and was valued internationally. “Then suddenly this U-turn. A UN colleague wrote to me: ‘We thought something like this only happened in authoritarian states.’”
Former German Foreign Minister, Social Democrat Sigmar Gabriel shared a similar position. “Ms Baerbock can learn a lot from [Schmid],” he said.
“The United Nations is needed more than ever before,” Baerbock said, adding that she would adapt the UN to 21st-century challenges, including reforming its structure to cut costs and improve efficiency.
As ambitious as those words sound, Baerbock’s triumph as UN GA president-elect so far looks to be rather a fall upwards than a genuine alternative the United Nations usually needs: someone who just oozes diplomatic skills, experience, and the ability to truly unite agendas and interests to provide common ground.
At just 44 years of age, having faced plagiarism and falsified CV allegations alongside comments widely seen as pro-Israel her election is truly puzzling.
Now that any meaningful work is practically deadlocked in the Security Council – the UN’s only truly powerful institution – value of work in the General Assembly should be elevated just like it was during the 1970s and 1980s.
The nomination and election of a politician who could not really keep her own foreign policy in line with her own government, lacking any profound diplomatic pedigree paints a very unflattering picture of multilateralism and the state of the United Nations itself.
This time it is the UN that is telling its own members: really mind your own business.
